Systems that include integrated circuit (IC) devices typically include decoupling capacitors (also known as bypass capacitors). A typical decoupling capacitor is coupled between power and ground pins (i.e., terminals) of a packaged IC to reduce noise on the power system within the IC. The decoupling capacitors also prevent any sag or dip in the supply voltage due to switching events occurring inside the IC. While in some cases the die and/or package of the IC include some decoupling capacitance, the amount of capacitance required is such that one or more additional discrete decoupling capacitors are usually added external to the packaged device.
Depending on the application, few to several 10 s of decoupling capacitors are mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB) within a few inches of the packaged IC. The physical size of these discrete decoupling capacitors varies. In any case, the discrete decoupling capacitors occupy valuable real estate on the PCB around the IC. It is desirable to mitigate this use of real estate around the IC in order to improve the quality of routing conductive traces between circuit components on the PCB, which improves signal quality. Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for a decoupling capacitor circuit assembly that uses less real estate on the PCB around the IC.